


Dorian

by OceanTheSoulRebel



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: 2nd POV, Character Study, Dorian romance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 10:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17916953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanTheSoulRebel/pseuds/OceanTheSoulRebel
Summary: An exploration of romancing Dorian.





	Dorian

Dorian doesn’t spend the night. He’ll stay over into the wee hours of the morning, and he might let you fall asleep curled against his side after seducing you into another round, but he doesn’t stay the night. You wake up to a room still smelling like sex and sweat and his cologne, but never to him nestled among the bedclothes.

Neither does he invite you to his own quarters. No, that’s his personal space. He doesn’t invite anyone back for any activities, you learn (the castle runners are a gossipy lot). He’d much prefer meeting you in your own room. Or in the library for some reading. Or out in the garden, for a game of chess or a stroll. Pretty much anywhere but in his private sanctum. And when you suggest it, he reminds you of the beautiful views you have from your tower, and isn’t that just so fascinating, how much sun pours in through those doors? Somehow he always has you going somewhere else, but it’s not really a bother; he values his privacy, and it is a quirk that you don’t ask about and he does not explain.

Dorian laughs it off if you give him those long, lingering looks. Bedroom eyes, he calls them; when you’re alone he smiles and asks with wagging brows if you have further need to “inquisit” him, says that he’ll come by later tonight. But there’s still a distance to all this.  It’s a carefully curated dance, one he knows pretty well. His masks change from public to private, but attention to detail shows that they’re still there.

He’s not a needy man. He _craves-_ –oh, does he crave-–and he generously teaches you how to sate him as he learns your own desires. Days and nights blend together in his particular brand of bravado and arrogance, and he teases and tempts and flirts his way into your bed, again and again. But he never needs; your arrangement is not so tender it is irreplaceable, and you are not so lovely that he cannot live without you.

* * *

 

But the changes come, slowly but surely.

 

* * *

You often write to him from the road, telling him of a new volume of something interesting, or an exciting spell you saw used, or some pretty thing you picked up while in the region. You write to him, and he sometimes will write back. This week, he’s sent a letter first, and it comes in with casual, not-quite-sloppy penmanship, so different from the deliberate flowing script of his other missives. And it’s longer, almost double what he usually sends--he heard a snippet of conversation that he wanted to share with you. “It couldn’t wait,” he says, “and you would best appreciate the wit in person, but, alas.”

He meets you at the gates when the horn sounds your arrival after months away. Not every time, but some, and then most of them, when you have left him working on some project or another back in Skyhold. He doesn’t actually admit this, no. Dorian was simply taking a walk, or had to go talk with Master Dennet about new tack for his horse--but you know for a fact that the dracolisk that likes to try to eat his buckles was left at Skyhold this trip, and that Dorian wouldn’t risk his clothing for a conversation he would have been better off having with the Quartermaster, anyway.

Dorian walks with you to the tavern often, when you have the time, and sometimes seeks you out even as you return gross and grimy from the road. He doesn’t always outright offer to buy you a drink but he clinks his glass with yours. “To your health,” he says, slipping Cobb a shiny coin worth more than enough for your shared drinks.

The touches come both slower and more frantic. Dorian brushes against you when reaching for the top shelf in his reading nook. His hand lingers when he pats your shoulder, and he stands closer, his warmth a brand searing against your side. At night, his grip is a little harder, his fingers digging deeper into your muscles. His nails rake familiar furrows into your skin but something’s changed, something in the way he says your name, in the way his body meets yours.

He holds you in the afterglow for a long, drawn-out moment before muttering something about the mess and how pretty he’d like to stay, thank you very much, and getting up to grab a washcloth.

Dorian sends you books between meetings, organized with carefully placed bookmarks; when you open them they reveal his thoughtful remarks. “What do you think about this?” he asks. “What are your thoughts here?”

And he smiles–-full, bright, as close to _happy_ as you have found him here–-when you come to the library in your rare time off to discuss the passages he’d marked. His hands wave gracefully as he speaks.

And one night Dorian kisses you.

It’s not that he hasn’t before. There have been kisses--tens of them, hundreds, thousands, maybe, but none like this. None that had been so _searching,_ so _tender._ His hand cups your cheek, guiding you just so, and instinctively he presses you against the bookshelf, but it’s not heated; it’s not foreplay but it’s _something_ , tremulous and not-quite-chaste and fluttery.

He pulls away and presses his brow against yours.

“Come upstairs?” you ask, breathless and full of wonder.

 

Dorian smiles, and it is a slow, languid affair. “My room’s closer,” he murmurs, and he tugs your heart as easily as your hand when he silently asks you to follow.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I just really love this man. 
> 
> -
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> Come find me on tumblr at [ocean-in-my-rebel-soul!](https://ocean-in-my-rebel-soul.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
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> Comments and concrit always appreciated! Thank you for reading!


End file.
